Thursday, February 13, 2014

The king and the woman · The Pope's Mass at Santa Marta · Feb. 13, 2014

Pope Francis spoke about the risk of
corruption at the Mass he celebrated on Thursday morning, 13 February, in the
Chapel of Santa Marta.

He pointed to two emblematic figures from Scripture:
King Solomon, and the woman who asks Jesus to heal her possessed daughter.

The
Pope wanted to encourage the path of those who, quietly, every day, set out in
search of the Lord, passing from idolatry to the true faith.

The “two figures” the Pope chose for his
sermon were taken from the day's readings. He referenced the first Book of
Kings (11:4-13) to speak about Solomon, and the Gospel of Mark (7:24-30) to
present the image of the woman “who spoke Greek and was Syro-Phoenician”, and
who begged Jesus “to drive out the demon from her daughter”.

The Pope explained
how Solomon and the woman take two opposite paths. “Today the Church invites us
to reflect on the journey from paganism and idolatry to the living God, and
also on the journey from the living God to idolatry”.

The Gospel tells us that, turning to Jesus,
the woman is “brave”, as any “desperate mother” who would do anything “for the
health of their child”. “She had been told that there was a good man, a
prophet”, the Pope said, and so she went to look for Jesus, even though she
“did not believe in the God of Israel”.

For the sake of her daughter “she was
not ashamed of how she might look before the apostles”, who might say amongst
themselves “what is this pagan doing here?”. She had come close to Jesus to beg
him to help her daughter who was possessed by an unclean spirit.

But Jesus
responds to her request saying “I came first for the sheep of the house of
Israel”.

He “speaks with harsh words”, saying: “Let the children help
themselves first, because it is not good to take the children's bread and throw
it to the dogs”.

The woman — who “certainly had never
attended university” the Holy Father said — did not respond to Jesus “with
intelligence, but instead with a mother's gut, with love”. She said: “Even the
dogs under the table will eat the children’s crumbs”, as if to say: “Give these
crumbs to me!”. Moved by her faith, “the Lord worked a miracle”. She “returned
home, found her daughter lying on her bed, and the demon was gone”.

Essentially, it is the story of a mother
who “risked making a fool of herself, but still insisted” out of love for her
daughter. She left “paganism and idolatry, and found health for her daughter”,
and for herself she “found the living God”.

The Pope explained that hers is
“the way of a person of good will, who seeks God and finds him”. For her faith,
“the Lord blesses her”. This is also the story of so many people who still
“make this journey”. “The Lord waits for” these people, who are moved by the
Holy Spirit.

“There are people who make this journey every day in the Church of
God, silently seeking the Lord”, because they “let themselves be carried
forward by the Holy Spirit”.

However, the Pope warned, there is also
“the opposite path”, which is represented by the figure of Solomon, “the wisest
man on earth, who had received many great blessings; he had inherited a united
country, the union that his father David had made”.

King Solomon had “universal
fame”, he had “complete power”. He was also “a believer in God”. So why did he
lose his faith? The answer lies in the biblical passage: “His women made him
divert his heart to follow other gods, and his heart did not remain with the
Lord, his God, as the heart of David his father did”.

The Pope said that Solomon “liked women. He
had many concubines and would travel with them here and there: each with her
own god, her own idol”. “These women slowly weakened Solomon’s heart”. He,
therefore, “lost the integrity” of the faith. When “one woman would ask him for
a small temple” for “her god”, he would build it “on a mountain”. And when
another woman would ask him for incense to burn for an idol, he would buy it.
In doing so “his heart was weakened and he lost his faith”.

“The wisest man in the world” lost his
faith this way, the Holy Father said. Solomon allowed himself to become corrupt
because of “an indiscreet love, without discretion, because of his passions”.

Yet, the Pope said, you might say: “But, father, Solomon did not lose his
faith, he still believed in God, he could recite the Bible” from memory. To
this objection the Pope replied: “having faith does not mean being able to
recite the Creed: you can still recite the Creed after having lost your
faith!”.

Solomon, the Pope continued, “was a sinner
in the beginning like his father David. But then he continued living as a
sinner” and became “corrupt: his heart was corrupted by idolatry”.

His father
David “was a sinner, but the Lord had forgiven all of sins because he was
humble and asked for forgiveness”. Instead, Solomon’s “vanity and passions led”
him to “corruption”. For, the Pope explained, “the heart is precisely the place
where you can lose your faith”.

The king, therefore, takes the opposite
“path than that of the Syro-Phoenician woman: she leaves the idolatry of
paganism and comes to find the living God”, while Solomon instead “left the
living God and finds idolatry: what a poor man! She was a sinner, sure, just as
we all are. But he was corrupt”.

Referring to a passage from the Letter to
the Hebrews, the Pope expressed his hope that “no evil seed will grow” in the
human heart. It was “the seed of evil passions, growing in Solomon’s heart” that “led him to idolatry”.

To prevent
this seed from developing, Pope Francis indicated “the good counsel” that was
suggested in the Gospel reading of the day: “Receive with meekness the Word
that has been planted in you and it can lead you to salvation”.

With this
knowledge, the Pope concluded, “we follow the path of the Canaanite woman, the
pagan woman, accepting the Word of God, which was planted in us and will lead
us to salvation”. The Word of God is “powerful, and it will safeguard us on the
path and prevent us from the destruction of corruption and all that leads to
idolatry”.